Sunday, October 9, 2016

Thanks!

Back when I was a student, some of my
more creative colleagues acted out this gospel story [Luke 17:11-19], changing the 10 lepers to 10
“leapers” - and hopping around the sanctuary accordingly. I remember the
occasion, but not the point. And I confess that ever since then it has sometimes been
somewhat difficult for me as a preacher to approach this story with the
seriousness Luke intended and which it undoubtedly deserves!

But sickness is certainly serious. Diseases scare people. You don’t have
to be a hypochondriac to be unnerved whenever some new plague presents itself.
I was a boy back at the time of the last big polio epidemic in the U.S. in the
1950s, and I can remember how frightened people were by a dangerous disease,
against which they felt so defenseless. I remember the panic in the 1980s when
HIV/AIDS was killing thousands of people. More recently, we’ve seen epidemics
of viral hemorrhagicfevers like
Ebola. And now we see the scary Zika virus practically around the corner.

Having experienced all this in our own
time, we should easily understand how frightened and threatened ancient peoples
felt, faced with the mysterious illness they called leprosy. Those afflicted
with it were often legally segregated outside cities and towns (as was done in
19th-century Hawaii). Indeed, the sick are often seen as a threat –
or at least a source of discomfort – to be avoided by those who think of
themselves as healthy and normal.

In actual fact, what the ancients
called “leprosy” was often a curable skin condition – hence the Law’s provision
of a procedure for examination by the priests, But until one had been examined
and certified as cured, the leper was considered impure and unclean. Cut off
from normal social life, the lot of the leper was a hard one - until suddenly
into all this misery moved Jesus, for whom the fact that the sick were shunned
and despised did not detract from their significance in his sight. All the
lepers said was, “Jesus, Master! Have
pity on us!” The sick don’t need to say much. They can communicate quite
effectively just by being who they are.

Desperation often makes for hope. So,
when commanded to go and show themselves to the priests, they went immediately.

And, suddenly, they were cleansed - whereupon one of them, realizing what had
happened, returned to thank Jesus.

Presumably, the other nine went on to
Jerusalem to show themselves to the priests as Jesus had directed them to do.
But this 10th leper was a Samaritan. As misfortune often does, disease
had brought together people who would not normally have associated with each
other. Once they had been healed, however, once the barrier that united them by
separating them from the society of the healthy had been breached, then all the
normal social barriers reappeared.

Presumably, the Samaritan could have found
himself a Samaritan priest in Samaria. It is quite likely he did that anyway
when he finally returned home. Once healed, however, something special had
happened to him, something so special it changed his whole outlook. He
returned, glorifying God in a loud voice,
fell at the feet of Jesus, and thanked him. Seeing he had been healed, his
vision broadened and - like that other famous foreign leper Naaman the Syrian (2 Kings 5:14-17) - he was drawn into the deeper insight
we call faith. He recognized not only what had happened but why. And the why
was Jesus. Leper no longer, he was still a Samaritan; but he was no longer an
outsider in relation to God. And so he responded with faith and thanksgiving.

Gratitude is the first fruit of faith.
It’s our response to the God who - as Paul said to Timothy (2 Timothy 2:8-13) - always remains faithful. Giving thanks is what it actually means to live
as a Christian. It is our awareness – made individual and personal in each
one’s own experience of God’s particular kindness – an awareness that God’s
power to save is greater than all the obstacles we or the world put in his way.

And that is why the Eucharist (a word
which literally means thanksgiving)
has to be at the very center of our Christian life. Our thanksgiving finds its
center in the Eucharist, because that is where we find Jesus, our one and only
healer and savior. Through him, with him, and in him, we give thanks to God the
Father for all that he has been for us and done for us. But true gratitude
cannot be confined to one hour each week or one event in a year – any more than
the Samaritan’s gratitude could authentically end in one single emotional
scene. My whole life must become one extended Eucharist, one prolonged prayer
of thanksgiving, giving thanks for what God is doing right now for me and with
me and within me.

After he had been healed, Naaman, that
earlier foreigner, also found faith, and he too returned to give thanks. Not
only had he been healed, his whole life had been changed. So he took some of
Israel home with him, so that, wherever he went in the world, he would be able
to worship the Lord on the Lord’s own land. What will we taken home from here?
We are here today, as every Sunday, to celebrate the thanksgiving that stands
as the very center of our lives as the Lord’s grateful people. So how will we
continue to give thanks – to be truly thankful people - today, tomorrow, and
every day?

Homily
for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church,
Knoxville, TN, October 9, 2016.

About Me

Rev. Ronald Franco, CSP, is a member of the Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle (The Paulist Fathers) and Vice-Postulator for the Canonization Cause of Paulist Founder, Isaac Hecker. He is Pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish, Knoxville, TN,